I have just found out that I as a resident of Denmark have the possibility of having a free corrective operation because of my poor eyesight (-7.00 on both eyes - if you use other standards in other countries, this means that I can only just focuse if I'm precisely 10 cm from the object I'm looking at) - talk about public healthcare!

Anyway, I don't know anyone who has had surgery such as this, and so I ask Textkit if anyone has had corrective surgery. How was it? What did it feel like to put away the glasses? I have worn glasses every day since I was 8 (now 20), and the glasses are sort of part of my face.

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I was intrigued. I bought the programme and practiced the simple eye exercises every day. In three weeks I jumped from 20/100 to 20/30. In the months that followed I perfected my vision to 20/20 and even 20/15. When I got my physical for the Air Force last November, the result was 20/20 left, right, and together.

Nearsightedness is a "musclebounding" of the eyes â€” the lenses are controlled by ciliary muscles that change their shape; the ciliary muscles are contracted (tensed) when the eye is looking at something close, like a book or computer screen. They are relaxed when looking ~7 feet away, and they are stretched when looking more than 7 feet away.

When we do something like read or use the computer, the ciliary muscles are tensed. If we read all the time, then the ciliary muscles find a "resting" state that is always tensed, and are incapable of relaxing, i.e. focusing on objects far away. This is not a permanent condition, and the eye exercises in the Vision For Life programme train those muscles back to a natural state â€” that is, back to 20/20 (or better, as in my case).

Laser eye surgery does not address the problem (tensed, musclebound ciliary muscles), and instead actually changes the shape of the cornea in order to mimic one's glasses perscription. Laser eye surgery is basically just making it so you can never take your glasses off ever again. The thought alone terrifies me, personally.

You ask what it was like to put away the glasses. I tell you, man, it was the most ecstatic experience of my life: I could see every leaf, every branch, every stone and pebble, every face and strand of hair again â€” all things I had missed since childhood. I could see the stars again. I could see the detailed face of the Moon again! Throwing away the glasses was like Tiny Tim throwing away his crutch, knowing that something miraculous had occurred. The world was now in HD for me, and there was no turning back.

Lucus Eques wrote:You ask what it was like to put away the glasses. I tell you, man, it was the most ecstatic experience of my life: I could see every leaf, every branch, every stone and pebble, every face and strand of hair again â€” all things I had missed since childhood. I could see the stars again. I could see the detailed face of the Moon again! Throwing away the glasses was like Tiny Tim throwing away his crutch, knowing that something miraculous had occurred. The world was now in HD for me, and there was no turning back.

About the purely medical issues, I think I'll let my doctor explain it to me, though I'll keep in mind and ask him about the question you've raised. Not to demean your statement, though, but I do trust my doctor a lot.

About this that I've quoted - I can see perfectly clearly with my glasses on. Sometimes it even seems my eyesight is better wearing glasses than that of my peers with so-called perfect vision, so that's not really a problem for me. Only thing is that everything is slightly smaller through my glasses.

I was rather thinking of the purely aesthetic side of things (in danger of sounding rather vain). How is it to let go of one's 'old face' and having to get used to a whole new view of oneself - I suspect I wouldn't feel like looking myself in the mirror at all anymore.

I've never had vision problems and have never needed corrective lenses of any kind, so I cannot give first-hand experience, but my wife, my mother, my mother-in-law and many friends have all had corrective eye surgery (lasik) and every one of them is very happy that they did. All have either 20/20 or very near 20/20 vision. The only exception is one friend who had both near and far-sightedness. He opted to have one eye corrected for near vision and one for far vision, so I don't know what his official 20/x vision is, but last time I saw him, he was also very pleased with his results.

0, +1, -7, etc. are lens powers measured in dioptres. If your eye has a super high power from intense nearpoint work and cannot relax, like +6, then you will need a lens that is -6 in order to make 0.

At 20 ft the rays of light entering the eye are roughly parallel. So, at 20 ft, if you can read the letters a normally sighted person can read (i.e. the 20/20 line), then you have 20/20 vision. If you can read the letters that a normally sighted person can read from only 15 ft away (which is even better), then you have 20/15 vision. However, if you can only read letters as if you are a normally person 200 ft away, then you have 20/200 vision.

Nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and presbyopia result from inborn and acquired characteristics of the lens and the eyeball

This statement is false. I had 20/20 until I got my first computer in middle school; then my vision deteriorated, and I was prescribed glasses; later, oddly, I acquired astigmatism. Then I trained my eyes back to 20/20, trained away the astigmatism, and was confirmed so (I can email anyone the scan I took of the form from the Air Force). Equally, my father used to be farsighted (presbyopia), but through eye training can now read without glasses.

Very unfortunate that such bad information is being circulated! Altho' there are some eye conditions that are inborn and require glasses or other corrective procedures, most nearsightedness and farsightedness is acquired.

I did these same eye ecrecises and I have the complete set of these. I did them a few years ago. there were changes but they were quickly counter-acted by my less than excellent habits. I didn't have time and I didn't possess sufficient skills to relax my eyes and I rubbed them. Although, now I do a type of daoist eye exerceises that are better for me, because they just work better for me. These involve something like this: eye rotations, eye movements left and right, up and down, diagonally, all about 10 times all to be done in a relaxed and effortless manner. The old ones that I bought from rebulid your vision, I was not good enough at them I guess. What part of the day did you do them?

Estoniacus Inoriginale wrote:I did these same eye ecrecises and I have the complete set of these. I did them a few years ago. there were changes but they were quickly counter-acted by my less than excellent habits. I didn't have time and I didn't possess sufficient skills to relax my eyes and I rubbed them. Although, now I do a type of daoist eye exerceises that are better for me, because they just work better for me. These involve something like this: eye rotations, eye movements left and right, up and down, diagonally, all about 10 times all to be done in a relaxed and effortless manner. The old ones that I bought from rebulid your vision, I was not good enough at them I guess. What part of the day did you do them?

Another Daoist exercise is to stare at the Moon. I actually did this for a year to improve my vision before knowing it had been done before.

You rightly note that good habits are everything â€” the purpose ultimately of the eye exercises is to train you how to use your eyes without abusing them or forcing them into, say, nearsightedness, by making good habits. The most important one by far is just to give your eyes a rest while reading: every ten minutes of reading, look at something ~10 feet away, for ten seconds â€” it's called the 10-10-10 rule. If we all did that from childhood we'd have never become nearsighted in the first place. This technique, this habit, is the most essential, I feel, to the maintainance of my good eyesight.

You asked what time of day I would do them: the morning, every morning, for a month. I'm glad you are finding success with the exercises you are doing now. In my opinion, I compare what I believe to be the unnecessary surgery of lasik to the stapling of one's stomach to prevent weight gain â€” in both cases, I feel that proper exercise and good habits are the key, not surgery.

One thing about the daoist eye exercises that I didn't mention is that there are staring exercises, more precisely, attempting to count the leaves of a tree or flowers in the grass in the most relaxed manner, either standing in the wuji posture, which is the opposite of taiji, a martial art that I also practice. The exercises can also be done sitting, as long as the back is erect.
The wuji posture is done like this: the legs are shoulder-with apart and the toes placed pointing straight ahead and knees slightly bent, also pointing a head, the back should be erected and straight but naturally, not completely like a post. The facial muscles are to be kept as relaxed as possible, the tongue slightly touching the roof of the mouth, close to the teeth, the hands resting on the sides. Any eye exercise requires attention. Whenever laxity and lack of interest arises, the attention should go to the breath, while nonjudgementally noting that the inbreath is exciting and the outbreath is relaxing. Then, in a mindful manner one can do quite a lot of things more effectively, with greater "control" over the emotions. That last part is the prerequesite of any high qualty meditation practice. I also do more intense martial arts training too, what is commonly called kung fu, with sparring of various contact levels. I've noticed that vision is not a problem for me in martial arts practice. Also, for me, intense muscle tension for longer periods makes the vison slightly blurry, but after rest, an opposite effect is apparent if one doesn't involve in stressful activites afterwards like reading.
That 10-10-10 rule, I've not done that for along time. It is VERY good that you remind me of it. Although, to be honest, I've been very adept at doing the 60-10-10 rule LOL. By the way, one good exercise is like this, close the eyes and watch left and right in a smooth but rythmic manner. It is mostly good for the surface of the eyes, especially if you don't have dust or other particles in there, which should be washed out because they might cause irriation if not damage. Meditation can usually do only good to vision.

Estoniacus Inoriginale wrote:One thing about the daoist eye exercises that I didn't mention is that there are staring exercises, more precisely, attempting to count the leaves of a tree or flowers in the grass in the most relaxed manner, either standing in the wuji posture, which is the opposite of taiji, a martial art that I also practice. The exercises can also be done sitting, as long as the back is erect. The wuji posture is done like this: the legs are shoulder-with apart and the toes placed pointing straight ahead and knees slightly bent, also pointing a head, the back should be erected and straight but naturally, not completely like a post. The facial muscles are to be kept as relaxed as possible, the tongue slightly touching the roof of the mouth, close to the teeth, the hands resting on the sides. Any eye exercise requires attention. Whenever laxity and lack of interest arises, the attention should go to the breath, while nonjudgementally noting that the inbreath is exciting and the outbreath is relaxing. Then, in a mindful manner one can do quite a lot of things more effectively, with greater "control" over the emotions. That last part is the prerequesite of any high qualty meditation practice. I also do more intense martial arts training too, what is commonly called kung fu, with sparring of various contact levels. I've noticed that vision is not a problem for me in martial arts practice. Also, for me, intense muscle tension for longer periods makes the vison slightly blurry, but after rest, an opposite effect is apparent if one doesn't involve in stressful activites afterwards like reading. That 10-10-10 rule, I've not done that for along time. It is VERY good that you remind me of it. Although, to be honest, I've been very adept at doing the 60-10-10 rule LOL. By the way, one good exercise is like this, close the eyes and watch left and right in a smooth but rythmic manner. It is mostly good for the surface of the eyes, especially if you don't have dust or other particles in there, which should be washed out because they might cause irriation if not damage. Meditation can usually do only good to vision.

Well, after doing a little bit of research, it seems that there is quite a controversy with eye exercises. Even for the causes of myopia and astigmatism still have some disputes. I guess it did change my mind a bit because I just thought many of these causes of visions were myths. I have just usually reduced my vision problems to genetics because my two brothers and I have deficient vision, my sister has none whatsoever. She is heavy reader like I am, but my two brothers are not... I am quite jealous of your success Lucus. I would love to believe that it would work for me, but I am not ready to gamble $97 yet even though there is that fangled "money back guarantee".

This was quite an interesting statement:

"The prevalence of myopia has been reported as high as 70-90% in some Asian countries. 30-40% in Europe and the United States, and 10-20% in Africa."

Well, myopia is more like 70% with college age students and younger in Europe and the US, and I am certain that is from heavy computer use. I myself had 20/20 as a kid until I got my first computer, and strained the hell out of my eyes.

As for the difference between siblings, altho' there is a genetic factor for a predisposition to certain vision problem possibilities, it is minor compared with habits. Habits, good or bad, define your vision. See if anything your sister does in practice is different from you or your brother during long periods of reading. Does she look away? How far away does she hold the book? Nutrition also plays a factor.

Yes, the Bates method appears to be some pioneering research in the field. There are differences, but there is some similarity, which you can tell from what I've said.